Monitoring aspects of self-administration is becoming more and more important from several aspects. One aspect is that many physicians would like to have more information regarding how a patient is handling the administration of drugs, especially if the patient is following a treatment scheme. In many cases the physician has to rely on what the patients are telling, which may or may not be actually according to the truth. This gives an uncertainty as to how well the patient is responding to the treatment. For instance, if the patient misses several occasions when a dose was to be administered, or administers doses too unregularly, too close to and/or too far to a previous dose, then this may adversely affect the treatment, which could be misinterpreted that the treatment scheme and/or the medicament is not good. In that respect, it might be that the patient does not want to tell the physician that he/she has not followed the scheme and may even discard medicament delivery devices that have not even been used in order to conceal that the treatment scheme has not been followed.
Some solutions to monitor user behaviour have been directed at not having the device as such performing any monitoring or recording when the device is being used but to utilize other equipment that is used in connection with medicament delivery devices. One such equipment is a sharps bin that is required when handling medicament delivery devices arranged with injection needles that may cause injuries such as unintentional needle sticks. The user is requested to discard the medicament delivery devices as soon as possible in a safe sharps bin.
The use of a sharps bin may be utilized for obtaining information regarding the user's behaviour. The use of a sharps bin instead of monitoring by the device as such is an advantage in that the medicament delivery device needs not be modified in order to be able to monitor, record, store and/or transmit information regarding the use of the medicament delivery device.
One solution incorporating a sharps bin is disclosed in the document WO 2014/204958. The document discloses an apparatus for obtaining information from used medical waste products such as medicament delivery devices before they enter the sharps bin. According to a favourable embodiment, the apparatus will have a section or compartment before the sharps bin comprising a sensor that is capable of recording date and time and specifically by creating an image of the medicament delivery device passing the sensor. The sensor is then capable of transmitting the captured information wirelessly to a communications device by different technologies such as RFID, NFC, Bluetooth, etc. Also Ethernet lines or WiFi devices may be used.
The apparatus according to WO 2014/204958 is rather complicated in view of the function and the information obtained. The image creating sensor or camera is an expensive solution for providing a time stamp of the discarding of a used medicament delivery device. It is stated that the image sensor is capable of detecting specific types of waste, but it is very unclear how this may be done or for what purpose. The apparatus has further no blocking elements or the like preventing other objects from being thrown into the sharps bin.